Venue: University of Aarhus, Incuba Science Park, Room 139, Åbogade 15, 8200 Aarhus N

The Glocal Network on Media and Development (Glocal Nomad) hosts in collaboration with the Centre for Glocal Media Studies (GMS) this seminar on Media and Development. The aim is to present and discuss Different Perspectives on the interrelations between Media and Processes of Political, Social and Cultural Change in the Global South

Program

Thursday March 24, 2011

• 13.00 – 13.10  Assistant Professor Poul Erik Nielsen: Welcome and introduction to the seminar
• 13.10 – 13.50  PhD Scholar Johanna Stenersen, Media and Communication Studies Orebro University: PoderCiudadano? Citizen Participation and Communicative Action in Nicaraguan Civil Society
• 13.50 - 14.30  PhD Scholar Jacob Thorsen, Information and Media Studies: Political culture, public sphere and civil society in Nepal
• 14.30 - 15.00  Coffee break
• 15.00 - 15.40   PhD Scholar TekeNgomba, Information and Media Studies: The Professionalization of Political Campaign Communication: North-South Echoes
• 15.40 - 16.20   Associate Professor Oscar Hemer, K3 University of Malmö: Writing Transition
• 16.20 - 16.50 Poul Erik Nielsen: Different perspectives on Media and Development
• 16.50 - 17.00 Final remarks

Abstract

Johanna Stenersen

PoderCiudadano? Citizen Participation and Communicative Action in Nicaraguan Civil Society

In a globalized and networked society, civic involvement and social mobilization become increasingly more connected to issues of culture and consumption. Transnational communication flows add to the complex organization of political and social life and offer new ways to engage within and between local and global realms. Still, many people are not part directly part of those ‘flows’, and the daily struggles for survival and recognition are deeply immersed in the material and social conditions of their everyday life. The study applies a critical ethnographic approach to explore how this applies to the Nicaraguan women’s movement in a context marked by religious and political tensions, not least around the issue of abortion. The aim of this paper is to explore the communicative practices emerging from this local-global intersection, and discuss how social, cultural and political affiliations are articulated through expressive means of communication as local power struggles mix with global feminist and critical discourses, making social and political identities form and dissolve. I am particularly interested in the relations between communication and power where class, ethnicity, gender, cultural identity and ‘cultural difference’ become battlefields in which dominant epistemologies are both contested and reproduced.

Jacob Thorsen

Abstract

Political culture, public sphere and civil society in Nepal

This paper discusses Nepal’s tremendous transformation of the political system and the public sphere during the last 60 years and the contemporary changing dynamics influencing civil society as local radio are booming in rural Nepal.  

TekeNgomba

Abstract

The Professionalization of Political Campaign Communication: North-South Echoes

While political communications research has blossomed in the North, in the South, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, it has been marked by its limited scope. This article attempts to address one aspect of this North-South empirical imbalance by comparatively looking at the professionalization of political campaign communication in post-1990 Cameroon. The article examines how and why political campaign communication has changed in Cameroon since 1992 and compares the findings from Cameroon with findings from related research in the West. The study identifies and explains graded sequences of thematic similarities and dimensional differences in the professionalization processes of campaign communication in these societies.